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FACEBOOK. An illustration picture taken through a magnifying glass on March 28, 2018 in Moscow shows the icon for the social networking app Facebook on a smart phone screen. File photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP

LONDON, United Kingdom (UPDATED) – A scathing British parliamentary report on Monday, February 18, branded Facebook as "digital gangsters" who failed to fight the spread of fake news and violated data privacy.

Lawmakers' 18-month investigation into technology companies and disinformation also accused the world's largest social media platform of trying to hide the extent of Russian interference in foreign elections.

Facebook is coming under attack over its response to Russia's alleged use of misleading stories and targeted ads to sway the 2016 US presidential election and a series of European votes.

Its executives have further been accused of trying to either hide or suppress emerging evidence of foreign meddling flagged by its engineers.

Parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins said Facebook "deliberately sought to frustrate our work by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions".

"We further recommend that the Government launches an independent investigation into past elections – including the UK election of 2017, the UK Referendum of 2016, and the Scottish Referendum of 2014 – to explore what actually happened with regard to foreign influence," the report said.

Russia has denied either backing Britain's decision to leave the European Union or covertly backing pro-Brexit leaders during the 2016 referendum campaign.

Facebook spokesman Karim Palant said executives at the California company "share the committee's concerns about false news and election integrity."

"We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee's recommendation for electoral law reform," Palant said in a statement released to AFP.

But Collins said Facebook has only adopted incremental policy changes that were mostly aimed at fending off regulation making it liable for the spread of malicious stories.

"They have taken a step, largely I think, to offset legislation," Collins told BBC radio.

"It shouldn't be down to Mark Zuckerberg to determine what the code is for election advertising in the UK through Facebook."

Russian interference

The committee had earlier found that Facebook's engineers had flagged potentially malicious Russian activity as early as 2014 -- long before it became public.

Monday's report said the two Facebook officials who did testify "deliberately misled the committee or they were deliberately not briefed by senior executives at Facebook about the extent of Russian interference in foreign elections".

The committee further accused Facebook of offering Netflix and other popular apps preferential access to people's data even after it had tightened its privacy rules.

The British government has 8 weeks to respond to the parliamentary report.

It is also expected to release a "white paper" next month that Collins said should form the basis for new legislation governing social media companies' behaviour during election campaigns.

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Welcome to Rappler, a social news network where stories inspire community engagement and digitally fuelled actions for social change. Rappler comes from the root words "rap" (to discuss) + "ripple" (to make waves).